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Music

Most our printed music, music manuscripts, and music archives are available for consultation in our Rare Books & Music Reading Room

Electronic resources

We have a wide collection of e-resources and databases. Following a cyber-attack in October 2023 these are not available at the moment. 

Until these are reinstated, here is a list of useful resources which can be accessed for free: 

Concert programmes   
Database of collections of concert programmes held in European libraries, archives and museums. Some British Library programme collections are fully indexed here.  

Cecilia  
Online guide to music collections in archives, libraries and museums in the UK and Ireland. 

RISM – International Inventory of Musical Sources  
Online catalogue providing details of music manuscripts held by libraries and archives across the world. Its principal focus is material dating from before 1800.   

Early Music Online   
300 of the world’s earliest surviving volumes of printed music, held in the British Library, have been digitised and the content can be browsed in the Royal Holloway's digital repository  

Archives Hub and National Archives Discovery   
Search archival records across the UK. Perform an advanced search or use result filters to see items held at the British Library. However, please note not all our archival holdings are listed in these resources. 

DIAMM (the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music)  
Searchable database of images of European manuscripts containing polyphonic music from the medieval and early modern periods.